


To Hell and Back--Garrus Vakarian

by breakdancingsigma (hetawholockvengerstuck)



Series: To Hell and Back [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Ship is hinted at but not the main focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 13:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6081972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetawholockvengerstuck/pseuds/breakdancingsigma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was not how Garrus Vakarian had expected to die.</p><p>Well, okay, the angry mercs were to be expected. And the gunship. And he'd sort of almost come to terms with Shepard's re-entry into his life. </p><p>The salarian was a surprise, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hell and Back--Garrus Vakarian

This was not how Garrus Vakarian had expected to die.

Well, okay, the angry mercs were to be expected. And the gunship. And he'd sort of almost come to terms with Shepard's re-entry into his life.

The salarian was a surprise, though.

.....

...Wait...

There was a salarian standing over him right now. The same salarian, in fa--OH GOD PAIN.

He was being restrained. That was probably a good thing. He was in so much pain, but he wasn't sure why...oh, right, the rocket. His face. He couldn't breathe.

No, wait, he _could_ breathe. But he wasn't doing it on his own at the moment. The salarian frowned, then moved out of Garrus' view.

"Patient waking up."

"Already? That's not good." The voice was human, and sounded incredibly familiar.

"Up the dosage. Need more time."

The salarian went back to work. He was uncomfortably close to Garrus' face, but it didn't bother Garrus for long. He slipped back into unconsciousness.

* * *

The salarian was still there when he woke a second time. Garrus groaned. "What happened?"

"Badly injured. You are in _Normandy_ medbay. Hit by rocket during fight with Blue Suns. Damage was--" and here the salarian paused to take a deep breath, "-- _extensive_."

"You are recovering at a remarkable rate, Garrus." He could place that voice now. Dr. Chakwas, from the original _Normandy_ crew. So it wasn't a dream. Or was it? The _Normandy_ was nothing but rubble now. "Does it hurt to speak or breathe? The implants are fairly fresh."

"Implants?" Garrus reached up to feel his face. Sure enough, what he felt was not skin or hide. "How bad is it?"

Chakwas ignored the question. "It's good to see you again, Garrus, although I wish it could have been under different circumstances. To be honest, I doubt you would have made it if Dr. Solus hadn't been there to stabilize you."

The salarian put his hands behind his back. "Not stabilize. Merely kept him from bleeding out. Focused team. Had to get you on board quickly." He directed the last comment to Garrus. Then he nodded at the turian and said, "Archangel. Heard of your work while on Omega. Impressive. Reckless. Still, good work."

"Thanks." Garrus sat up slowly and looked around the medbay. It was more open than he remembered it, and better lit. White was the predominant color. "Where did you say I was? Where's Shepard?"

Chakwas settled against an adjacent cot. "You're aboard the SR-2 _Normandy._ As for Shepard, she's in the briefing room, I expect. But you shouldn't be up and about yet, Garrus. You're still healing. Frankly, I'm surprised that you're able to talk so soon."

"Good work on cybernetics," Dr. Solus said. "Surprised that ex-Alliance military doctor would know so much about turian biology. Turians rarely on Alliance ships."

"Well, once you learn all you can about humans, you tend to find yourself with lots of free time," said Chakwas.

Dr. Solus nodded. "Fortunate. Could come in handy. Already has, actually."

Just listening to the salarian speak was making Garrus' head spin. Salarians always spoke fast, and he'd dealt with many of the species during his time in C-Sec, but Dr. Solus was perhaps the purest example of the salarian speech pattern he'd ever heard. With his system only recently flushed of sedatives, Garrus was having a hard time comprehending the words being thrown around.

Speaking of sedatives...the dull pain that had been growing in his jaw and cheek suddenly spiked into near-agony. He flinched, mandibles--no, _mandible_ , there was only one now--flaring involuntarily. Dr. Chakwas was by his side in an instant, readying a syringe.

"No," Garrus weakly protested, trying to wave her away. "I'm fine."

"You need rest, Garrus," Chakwas countered. "And I know you. You're not going to just stay put while you wait for that injury to heal."

"Just give me pain meds and I'll be fine," Garrus insisted. Dr. Chakwas glanced at Dr. Solus, looking for support.

"Have not had time to inventory supplies. Are there pain meds safe for dextro-based lifeforms?" the salarian asked.

"Well, yes," Chakwas said, "but nothing particularly strong. It might numb the pain a bit, but not to a sufficiently comfortable level."

"I've dealt with worse," Garrus said. Both doctors gave him a look that said they didn't believe him.

"Sedating patient against his will is inadvisable," Dr. Solus said, almost as if to himself. "Will lead to distrust. Irritability. Uncooperative behavior." He inhaled deeply again. " _Problematic._ "

"If he doesn't rest, he might not heal properly," Dr. Chakwas countered, but her resolve was weakening. Garrus knew, even before Dr. Solus said it, that he had won the battle.

"Implants will hold. Impressive job, durable, unlikely to fail. Rate of recovery already remarkable."

Garrus was out of bed before the salarian had even finished his sentence. "Mind directing me to the briefing room? I have an old friend to catch up with."

* * *

 

The elevator ride was both agonizingly slow and far too short. For one thing, Dr. Solus adamantly refused to tell Garrus how his scars looked, or even give him access to a mirror. For another, Garrus hadn't spoken to Shepard in a long, long time. Well, okay, he'd spoken with her on Omega, but that hardly counted. Now they were out of danger, back on the _Normandy_ \--well, okay, the new _Normandy_ \--and he had no idea what to say to the woman he'd thought dead for two whole years. The woman he'd missed for two whole years.

It had been surreal enough when he was unharmed, speaking to her as if nothing had changed...except it had.  _He_ had. But then he'd gone and been hit by a rocket, and everything just became a haze. He'd blacked out, or at least he thought he'd blacked out, because the next thing he remembered was gasping for breath that wouldn't come, his throat choked with blood and just  _not working_ , and there was Shepard leaning over him, face screwed up with fear, shouting at the human male she'd arrived with to radio Joker. She'd bent over Garrus, shouting at him to stay awake, to stay with her. She'd just found him, dammit, she wasn't going to lose him now...

Maybe he'd imagined that part. He'd been dying, after all. Who knew what his oxygen-deprived brain had come up with?

The last thing he remembered, before waking up in the medbay, was the salarian--who he now knew to be Dr. Solus--rolling him back onto his side, away from Shepard. Probably to prevent him from choking on his own blood, but at the time he'd been more concerned with the pain and the lack of oxygen to care. 

Even with the pain meds, his face felt like...well, like he'd taken a rocket to it. Inwardly, he cursed his stupidity-- _why, oh why did I leave my helmet off?_ \--but outwardly he was the picture of ease. He didn't want to give Dr. Solus any reason to condemn him to bedrest.

He should have expected the escort, in hindsight. No self-respecting doctor was going to let their patient, recently out of surgery, wander about a ship by himself. Besides, Dr. Solus had wanted to monitor the effects of the pain meds on Garrus, just to be sure.

That wasn't the only reason for Garrus to hide his discomfort. He didn't want Shepard to know he was in pain, or that he had been nearly content to die back there on Omega. To be honest, if Shepard hadn't shown up when she did, Garrus might have just given up and turned himself over to the mercs. It wasn't like he'd had too many options. He'd lost every reason to exist when he'd lost his team, had been living off sheer instinct and the innate impulse of all living things to _continue_ to live...and then she'd come back into his life, guns a-blazing and asking him to follow her to hell and back a second time.

From the moment she asked, he'd known what his answer would be. Of course he would follow her. He'd follow her anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've uploaded anything, so I decided to finish up a little drabble I began a while back. Hopefully, I'll write a few more of these for other characters in Mass Effect, but I can't be sure when I'll get around to it. I still need to finish Herding Aliens, after all!


End file.
